


Interrogation

by Alona



Category: Genghis Khan - Miike Snow (Music Video)
Genre: Flirting, M/M, Treat, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:17:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15452184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: Someone's in control of this interrogation, and it isn't who our world class supervillain thinks it is.





	Interrogation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fenellaevangela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/gifts).



"But, yeah, I just don't feel like I know what to say to Gracie and Arthur these days..."

There was a pause, and Reed cleared his throat. "Sorry, I missed that. I didn't get much sleep—the music." 

Goldnose looked at him eagerly. "Oh, did it keep you up? The boys—and girls—in Torture are always mixing it up. Do you have any notes for them?"

"Well, they could try staying away from the elevator music—just thinking about elevators makes me sleepy. And I like heavy metal, really. It was the subpar classical recordings keeping me up. So. Gracie and Arthur?"

Goldnose had been nodding along and was brought up short. Reed couldn't have just forgotten about that, could he. "Oh. My kids." 

Reed blinked a few times, rapidly. "I didn't know you have kids. I've always wanted kids myself, but, you know, it's no kind of life... How old?" 

"Seven and five. Arthur's just about to start kindergarten."

"That's sweet. It's wonderful how you can really see them turning into little people at that age. Younger siblings, me. Loads of them." 

"I didn't know you had siblings." 

"No, that's the idea. They don't advertise the connection. Good job Reed's such a common name." A beat. "You're not going to go looking for them, are you? I probably shouldn't have told you that." 

"Oh, no, don't worry. The threatening your family thing, that's bad public relations. But, you know, I am torturing you. The idea is you tell me things you're not supposed to." 

"I suppose. Speaking of torture—you couldn't untie my hands for just a minute? So I could take my contacts out. My eyes are killing me. I hardly noticed when those goons—pardon the expression—worked me over with their electrodes this morning." 

"Contacts? Oh. I thought your eyes were that blue naturally." 

"What? No, they are. That blue. I guess, I mean, I've never really thought about how blue—no. I'm near-sighted." 

"Oh. Oh, okay. Here. Will just one hand do?"

"It really needs both..."

"Fine. Hold still, and don't try anything." 

The knots were untied. Charles Reed, MI6 secret agent, shook out his hands one at a time, flexing the fingers with enough obvious pain that Goldnose's face itched from not wincing in sympathy. It didn't do to go around displaying sympathy for prisoners you were interrogating. He was starting to suspect that the interrogation had gone wrong somewhere, though he wasn't sure where. It was annoying him. So maybe he'd been overenthusiastic about having Reed in his clutches for the first time. Maybe he'd had the boys put in more overtime than he was authorized for (and he had a sternly worded e-mail from Villain HQ to show for it; damn Secretary Krillova and her army of pencil-pushers, anyway). There was no reason for the giddy panic in his stomach. Everything was under control. 

Everything was under control, and he was watching Charles Reed pinching bits of glass out of his eyeballs, which looked pretty uncomfortable. 

"That's better," Reed muttered thickly, rubbing his eyes. He'd dropped the contacts onto the floor. 

"Hey." Goldnose took a step towards him. "Hands down. I'm going to tie you back up now." 

Reed complied, looking sheepish. His bowtie had come mostly undone, and the remaining knot was under his right ear. Goldnose wanted to tear it off, or, alternately, to fix it for him. Definitely fix it. He wasn't imagining ripping off Reed's bowtie and opening his shirt collar and kissing his neck; of course not. You didn't have thoughts like that about the enemy. Though when you came down to it you didn't fix their clothes for them, either...

"Are you...is everything all right?"

"What?"

"You've just...stopped." 

Goldnose gave himself a shake and finished retying the knots. He stepped back. He was trying to figure out why Reed's voice sounded different all of a sudden. Was it softer? Less certain? His eyes weren't any less blue, that was for sure, though they were a little unfocused. His hair was all flattened on one side and sticking up on the other. It would probably be greasy to the touch, after this long. 

"Have you got my dinner jacket handy somewhere?"

"Huh? Oh, yes. It's in those lockers against the wall." 

"Well, as a great favor, do you think you could get my glasses out of the inside pocket? I can't see a thing." 

He was scared, that was it. Goldnose hadn't known Reed could be scared, but not being able to see was apparently what it took. He could use that. He could—

Reed smiled, just a little, almost shyly, squinting up into Goldnose's face. 

He's doing this on purpose, Goldnose thought dismally. He went to the lockers—the henchpersons who'd processed Reed had put his things in locker number seven, because they thought they had a sense of humor—found the jacket and the high-tech mesh case in the inside pocket containing a pair of glasses with black Tom Ford frames. Holding them lightly, he returned to Reed. 

Reed looked up at him, eyes wide and expectant.

I could break them, Goldnose thought. Crush them under my boot. He'd be terrified. He imagined that—Reed's face as he heard the frames crack, the glass crunch. 

He unfolded the glasses and brought them to Reed's face, carefully hooking each earpiece in place. He couldn't avoid touching Reed's hair that way—it was greasy, though still soft, and it was short enough right over his ears that it was warm from his skin. If you'd put a gun to his head right then, Goldnose couldn't have pulled away all at once. Instead his hands lingered, fixing Reed's hair in quick movements while he tried to ignore how his breath was catching. 

"There," he said, jerking his hands back. 

"I must look a mess," Reed said, putting his head to one side. His voice was even, but his chest was rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths. Goldnose could hardly stand to look at him. 

"You're fine. It's fine, I mean. I don't—" Goldnose stuttered to a halt. He was angry. He was pretty sure he was angry, that the mass of feeling building behind his breastbone as he looked at Reed with his newly smoothed hair and his designer glasses and his lips slightly parted and his stupid bowtie still askew—that was anger. How dare he be a real person with vision problems and vulnerabilities and younger siblings that Goldnose wouldn't have hurt in a million years, even if it hadn't been bad PR. 

"I'm a married man," Goldnose said. He was horrified to realize he'd said it out loud. He knew it was a mistake, even before he saw the look of quiet calculation settle over Reed's features. 

"Are you? Well, that's too bad. Molesting prisoners is right off the table, then." 

The disappointment in his voice was crushing. Goldnose stared at him. "What? You thought I'd—? I wouldn't! I wouldn't even—even _want_ to, and, if I didn't, I wouldn't—" 

Reed shook his head, relenting. "All right, calm down. I believe you—I believe part of that, anyway. Though you wanted to say, _If I did_ , actually. Not _didn't_. Just making a note." He looked away and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm all jumpy. This isn't going at all how I—. Look. What about the questions? If my sense of time hasn't failed me down here, my backup's due any minute, so if you're planning on getting anything—"

He stopped. Goldnose had pulled up a stool and folded himself onto it. He had his head down, the fingers of one hand running up and down the bridge of his nose, up to where prosthetic met skin, then back down; it was a silly self-soothing gesture he thought he'd cured himself of during the year following the accident. He wished Reed would keep talking, but he wasn't sure how to ask. 

"Look," Reed said, "it's not so bad, is it?"

"Go away." 

"I'd love to."

Goldnose sat up, glaring at Reed tied to his chair and looking at him with a horrible mix of pity and bitterness. He couldn't understand what had happened. Why had he started talking about Gracie and Arthur? That part of his life was supposed to be separate from work, he'd always kept it separate before—what was wrong with him?

"I—" he started to say. 

That was when one whole wall of the room exploded. Goldnose was flung from his stool. His ears rang. There was plaster dust in his eyes and on his tongue. He'd have to have a word with the contractors, they'd been skimping on the steel-reinforced walls again...

Other pointless thoughts dribbled through his head. His hearing started to come back: there was shouting and maybe gunfire. Then someone was turning him over, holding his head up. 

Groggily, Goldnose said, "Who?"

It was Reed, and he was leaning down close and grinning enormously, and his glasses were smeared where he'd only partially wiped the plaster dust away. He'd fixed his bowtie. Of course. 

"You're an idiot, and so am I," he said, that aggravating, idiotically charming secret agent lilt back in his voice. He tossed a glance over his shoulder, then leaned down the rest of the way and kissed Goldnose on the mouth. Increasingly convinced he was concussed or maybe dead, Goldnose scrabbled to get his hand up to Reed's neck, pulling him closer. The stupid glasses were clicking against his prosthetic. Reed tried to pull away and Goldnose clutched at his shirt and heard himself saying, "Don't go." 

Then Reed's lips were at his ear. His whisper was breathless and warm: "Come find me. Brush up on your dancing." 

There was a shout from a world away: "Hurry it up, Reed, get moving!" 

"That's my ride." Reed laughed, his grin brighter than before. Then he pushed his glasses back into place with the heel of his hand, touched his other hand to Goldnose's cheek, got to his feet, and was gone. 

Goldnose lay on his back, smiling mistily to himself. "All right, then," he said. A little later, the smile dimming: "But what happens now?"

An indeterminate length of time later, someone else was standing over him: Henchman Number Three. (His name was Greg and he had a twin sister named Margo and they kept dogs, two of them, poodles named Larry and Moe, but you weren't supposed to care enough about your employees to know that kind of thing when you were a supervillain.) 

"Boss? Did you break something?"

"No, I didn't break anything. Help me up." 

Henchman Greg gave Goldnose his arm to haul himself up by. He hadn't been concussed, he decided once he was on his feet, just stunned. 

"Clean this all up," he snapped. 

"Right, boss. And—"

"What?"

"Secretary Krillova on the phone for you. Something about the budget." 

Goldnose groaned. She was going to be polite about his Russian, even though he'd been getting behind on his lessons. She was always so polite. 

"I'll take it in the control room." He stomped away. After a few paces the stomping turned to a half-skipping shuffle, and then he tried out a twirl. It felt right. 

Dancing. Huh.


End file.
